Syncing Outlook to iPhone deletes a ton of notes from my Notes app: I am trying out a solution
On my iPhone 16’s Notes App, I often use the Outlook folder of notes that I had connected a long long time ago. There are a lot of important notes there that I write on my phone. My phone keeps annoying me whenever I open my Notes app telling me to go to Settings and log in to my Outlook email account to sync it with my phone. Yesterday, I finally did so, and for some reason, ALL of my notes created after early 2025 have disappeared. A journal that I had in that folder erased EVERY entry written after January 2025. I am shell-shocked and in disbelief that a year and a half‘s worth of work can just disappear… in seconds. I don’t understand how my notes aren’t backed up to my iCloud, because when I switched phones early this year, all the Outlook notes transferred without a problem. I find it unbelievable and disgusting that there is somehow a completely unknown mechanism on my Apple device that begged me for who knows how long to (re)sync Outlook, an app completely unaffiliated with Apple, after stupidly unsyncing itself at some point in the past year, only to destroy a year’s worth of my journals and notes out of nowhere. Who could have designed technology this foolish.
I have contacted support, and I left the call with a plan. I have iCloud backups from July and August, when I needed a loaner iPhone 14 to have my 16 fixed, and from earlier, my last iPhone 12 backup before switching to the 16. I will erase my iPhone 16 and set it up again using one of my backups. One question is, I don't know whether I can use a backup made from the iPhone 14, which was made in early August, or if I must use my iPhone 16 backup from late July. I would preferably use the later one if iPhone 14 backups can be used on the iPhone 16 without a problem.
To prevent Outlook from automatically syncing and removing all my notes again after the erase/backup/setup, I want to return my phone to the half-logged-in-half-logged-out state it was in before, when it kept bothering me with the popups, because then I'll know the syncing isn't working. But I can't directly turn off syncing for Notes in Settings because it deletes the drop-down menu in the Notes app for Outlook notes, and if I switch it back on, it'll likely sync with Outlook and remove everything again. The Apple support person suggested that changing my Microsoft password is likely enough for my phone to return to this state, but I have done this and it does not work. My Outlook Notes are still currently synced to my phone. So my second question is, is there any way for me to return to this state of limbo where it keeps sending me popups?
If everything goes smoothly, I will check my Notes app to see if my lost notes are there, and if they are, I will copy-paste them safely out. If they aren't, then I am out of luck. But I need to make sure I can stop the syncing. Please help, thank you so much.
TL;DR - My iPhone 16 kept annoying me with popups telling me to sync Outlook to my phone. I finally did it yesterday and it removed a ton of important notes on my iPhone Notes app dating back to January 2025. My last-ditch effort to get them back is to see if they are on one of my iPhone backups from before yesterday. I don't know whether I can use a iPhone 14 backup; if I can't, I'll use an earlier iPhone 16 backup. I also want to make sure that after I erase/backup/setup my phone, the same problem doesn't occur where everything gets removed due to the syncing. Therefore, before I erase/backup/setup, I would like to end syncing by returning to the "limbo state" where the popups appear to sync again. I do not know how to return to this limbo state and I need help. Thank you.